Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/342

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EDMUND


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EDMUND


London in time to witness the trial of one of the earliest Oxonian martyrs, Dr. John Storey. Campion now recognized his vocation and hastened to the seminarj' at Douai. Cecil lamented to Richard Stani- hurst the expatriation of one of the diamonds of England". At Douai Campion remained for his theo- logical course and its lesser degree, but then set out as a Barefoot pilgrim to Rome, arriving there just before the death of St. Francis Borgia; for I meant", as he said at his examination, "to enter into the Society of Jesus, thereof to vow and to be professed". This he accomplished promptly in April (1573), being the first novice received by llercurianus, the fourth general. As the English province was as yet non-existent, he was allotted to that of Bohemia, entering on his noviceship at Prague and passing his probation year at Brunn in Moravia. Returning to Prague, he taught in the col- lege and wrote a couple of sacred dramas; and there he was ordained in 1578. Meanwhile. Dr. Allen was organizing the apostolic work of the English Mission, and rejoiced to secure Fathers Robert Parsons and Eilraund Campion as his first Jesuit helpers. In the garden at Briinn, Campion had had a vision, in which Our Lady foretold to him his martjTdom. Comrades at Prague were moved to make a scroll for P. Edmundus Campianus Martyr, and to paint a pro- phetic garland of roses within his cell. Parsons and Campion set out from Rome, had many adventures, and called upon St. Charles Borromeo in Milan, and upon Beza in Geneva. Campion was met in London, and fitly clothed, armed, and mounted by a devoted young convert friend. His office was chiefly to reclaim Catholics who were wavering or temporizing under the pressure of governmental tyranny; but his zeal to win Protestants, his preaching, his whole saintly and sol- dierly personality, made a general and profoimd im- pression. An alarm was raised and he fled to the North, where he fell again to writing and produced his famous tract, the " Decem Rationes". He returned to London, only to withdraw again, this time towards Norfolk. A spy, a former steward of the Roper family, one George Eliot, was hot upon his track, and ran him and others down at Lj^'ord Grange near Wantage in Berkshire on 17 July, 1581.

Amid scenes of violent excitement, Campion was derisively paraded through the streets of his native city, bound hand and foot, riding backwards, with a paper stuck in his hat to denote the "seditious Jesuit". First thrown into Little Ease at the Tower, he was carried privately to the hou.se of his old patron, the Earl of Leicester; there he encountered the queen herself, and received earnest proffers of liberty and preferments would he but forsake his papistry. Hopton having tried in vain the same blandishments, on Campion's return to the Tower, the priest was then examined under torture, and was reported to have betrayed those who had harboured him. Several arrests were made on the strength of the lie. He had asked for a public disputation. But when it came off in the Norman chapel of the Tower, before the Dean of St. Paul's and other divines, Campion had been denied opportunity to prepare his debate, and had been severely racked. Thus weakened, he stood through the four long conferences, without chair, table, or notes, and stood undefeated. Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, who was looking on in the flush of worldly pride, became thereby inspired to return to God's service. The privy council, at its wits' end over so purely spiritual a "traitor", hatched a plot to im- peach Campion's loyalty, and called in the hirelings Eliot and Munday as accusers. A ridiculous trial ensued in Westminster Hall, 20 Nov., 1581. Campion, pleading not guilty, was (|uite unable to hold up his often-wrenched right arm, seeing which, a fellow- prisoner, first ki.ssing it, raised it for him. He made a magnificent defence. But the sentence was death, by banging, drawing, and quartering: a sentence re-


ceived by the martyrs with a joyful shout of Ha-c dies and Te Deum. Campion, with Sherwin and Briant, who were on a separate hurdle, was dragged to Tyburn on 1 December. Passing Newgate arch, he lifted him- self as best he could to salute the statue of Our Lady still in situ. On the scaffold, when interrupted and taunted to express his mind concerning the Bull of Pius V excommunicating Elizabeth, he answered only by a prayer for her, "your Queen and my Queen". He was a Catholic Englishman with political opinions which were not Allen's, though he died, as much as ever Felton did, for the primacy of the Holy See. The people loudly lamented his fate; and another great harvest of conversions began. A wild, generous- hearted youth, Henrj' Walpole, standing by, got his white doublet stained with Campion's blood; the inci- dent made him, too, in time, a Jesuit and a martyr.

Historians of all schools are agreed that the charges against Campion were wholesale sham. They praise his high intelligence, his beautiful gaiety, his fiery energy, his most chivalrous gentleness. He had renounced all opportiniity for a dazzling career in a world of master men. Every tradition of Edmund Campion, every remnant of his written words, and not least his unstudied golden letters, show us that he was nothing less than a man of genius; truly one of the great Elizabethans, but holy as none other of them all. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII on 9 Dec, 1886. Relics of him are preserved in Rome and Prague, in London, Oxford, Stonyhurst, and Roe- hampton. A not very convincing portrait was made soon after his death for the Gesii in Rome under the supervision of many who had known him. Of this there is a copy in oils at Stonyhurst, and a brilliantly engraved print in Hazart's " Kerckelvcke Historic" (.\ntwerp, 1669), Vol. Ill (.Enghelandt, etc.), though not in every copy of that now scarce work.

Campion's Historic of Ireland was first published by Staxi- lll'RsT in Hoi-lxsHED, Chronicles (loST), then in \\'arf,'s book under the same title (1633), and again by the Hibernia Press (DubUn, 1809); Edmiindi Campiani Dtcem Raliones el alia Optiscula, carefully edited (.\ntwerp, 1631); this included Orations. Leilcrs, and the Xarratio Divorlii Henrici VIII. Regis Angliw, ah Uxore et ab Ecclesid, first printed by Harpesfield. There is no modern ed. or tr. The standard biography is Simpson, Edmund Campion. Jesuit Protomartyr of England (London, 1S66; reissued, London, 1907). Accounts of Campion's life, labours, and death are in Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests; Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, and Stanton, Mcnology of England and Wales. The article on Campion by Cooper in the Did. Nat. Biog. and that in Gillow, Bibl. Diet. Eng. Cath. are based, in phrase, as in fact, upon iSlMPsox, op. cii. .\ much better ac- count is contained in Lives of the English Martyrs, completed and ed. by Camm (2 vols., London. 1905), II, 266-357. .\ sketch by Goldie appears in The English Martyrs (Catholic Truth Society, 2 vols., London, 1S92). For minor points con- nected with Campion see The Month (.August, 1S93; September, 1S97; Januarv, 1905); and The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, XII, Series III, 1891, pp. 629, 725. Besides a bibliography in Gillow, pp. 385-392, there is a more extensive one in Simpson, .\ppendix, itself founded on de Backer, Bibl. des Ecriv. de la c. de J. A small book devoted to him is The Blessed Edmund Campion in the ^'f. Xicholas Series (London, 1908).

L. I. Gdiney.

Edmund Rich, S.mxt, Archbishop of Canterbury, England, b. '20 November, e. 1180, at Abingdon, six miles from Oxford; d. 16 Nov., 1'240, at Soissy, France. His early chronology is somewhat uncer- tain. His parents, Reinald (Reginald) and Mabel Rich, were remarkable for piety. It is said that his mother constantly wore hair-cloth, and attended almost every niglit at Matins in the abbey church. His father, "even during the lifetime of his mother, entered the monastery of Eynsham in Oxfordshire, Edmund had two sisters and at least one brother. The two sisters became nuns at Catesby. From his earliest years he was taught by his mother to prac- tise acts of "penance, such as fasting on Satunlays on bread and water, and wearing a hair shirt. When old enough he was sent to study at Oxford. While there, the Child Christ appeared to him while he was walking